


Suds in the Bucket

by ArtistOwl



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Accidental Deadnaming, Alternate Universe - Human, Fluff, Irony, Kinda, Misunderstandings, Nonbinary Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Other, Songfic, Trans Deceit | Janus Sanders, accidental misgendering, mentions of transphobia, set sometime in the mid to late 20th century, very southern
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 08:34:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28632582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtistOwl/pseuds/ArtistOwl
Summary: It seems apparent to the townsfolk that the Graves’ daughter ran off with that boy to get married. Such a shame, she was always such a nice and sensible girl. Wonder what that boy told her to get her to come along?If Janus Graves knew what they were saying about him, he’d just laugh at how wrong they were - on so many levels.
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Deceit | Janus Sanders
Comments: 2
Kudos: 51





	Suds in the Bucket

**Author's Note:**

> So at some point, I realized that Sara Evans’s song “Suds in the Bucket” was told from the POV of the townsfolk guessing at what must have happened based on the evidence they had, and that meant that the girl in the song did not have to have been running away with a boy, which was a fun thought because there aren’t a lot of mainstream gay country songs. After some more thought, I realized that the narrators’ unreliability left room for a lot of interpretation, in fact, and then this happened. Enjoy.  
> All misgendering and deadnaming are about people who are not out.

It had been years since Janus Graves had realized that he was not Luther and Ida Mae Grave’s daughter, but rather their son. In those years he had never seen fit to inform them of this realization, likely aware of the nigh inevitability of a negative reaction from the both of them. His little sister Abigail - she’d be a hit-or-miss on the reaction, but on the off chance it went badly and she told, Janus had kept quiet. He was good at that, at being quiet, polite, saying nothing but pretty and empty words to near about every adult in his life, and to an awful lot of his peers as well. 

It was only a little past nine, but the July sun didn’t seem to notice, beating down onto his bowed head and bare shoulders as he knelt over the wash-tub in the backyard. The water was no longer as hot as it should have been, the wispy curls of steam having finally departed from the tub to mingle and add to the swampy, humid air around Janus’s head to give him that most wonderful sensation of feeling like a wet cloth had been shoved over his nose and mouth, making his throat feel boggy and breathing feel unreasonably strenuous. He wiped the sweat dripping down his brow away with his wrist, trying to plaster the straw-colored flyaways that had escaped his ponytail to anywhere on his face but near his eyes, and went back to scrubbing at the stain in his lavender skirt. On his walk home from the grocery store yesterday, a boy had ridden his bike too close and too near a puddle, and splashed the runny red mud over Janus’s shoes, socks, and skirt. Privately, he hoped they were ruined. Realistically, he knew that wouldn’t stop his mother from making him wear them. If he couldn’t get the stains out, then she could, and if she couldn’t, then she would tailor the clothing so that the stains would be gone, one way or another.

So Janus was scrubbing, scrubbing the stain on the skirt that he thought was ugly anyway. This was the second load of laundry he’d done that morning, the first load he’d already hung up on the clotheslines to dry, and the clothes hung limply in the wet, still air. Dad was at work, Momma was helping Millie Ann Brown prepare for the quilting bee that night, and Abby was off somewhere, probably out with her friends. He was squinting at the skirt hem, trying to figure if it was clean enough, when he caught the familiar spluttering rumble of an old engine at the edge of his hearing.

Janus’s mouth went dry.

He dropped the skirt back into the soapy water and ran over to the gate, kicking aside the cinder block that held it shut, and yanking the rusty latch out from where it was supposed to be properly hooked, and now either the warped wood or the rust had prevented that from happening. He bolted up the side of the yard, nearly skidding to a stop once he passed the side of his house, and could see the battered white Ford pickup rumbling down his road. He was still for less than half a second before spinning on his toe in an about-face and bolting back the way he came. He careened through the yard, around the abandoned wash-tub, thundering up the sagging wooden steps of the porch and letting the screen door bang shut behind him. He tore through the house, to the other side, throwing open the door to his room.

Janus had a red suitcase that, if he packed smartly and folded his clothes carefully, he could fit three weeks of laundry into. He did not do that. Janus had a little knapsack, like a drawstring backpack, that he'd filled three weeks ago with his two pairs of jeans, four loose t-shirts, and his worn yellow hoodie that was too big for him and had probably been his Dad's at some point; but the logo on the front had been washed off years ago, and now no one could really remember what it originally said, only what the abstract flakes of paint looked like. Janus grabbed this knapsack, tossed in some underthings and socks and toiletries, and then pulled his suitcase out from under his bed. Flinging open the lid showed that inside already were three books, several notebooks, a pencil case, an unopened water bottle, a few packets of instant coffee, and a box of protein bars. Janus put the knapsack in the suitcase and zipped up the lid. He'd been wearing a tank top and shorts to do the laundry, so he pulled a t-shirt on over his tank and exchanged his flip flops for his sturdiest and most comfortable sneakers. He grabbed a paper and pen, writing a short note and sticking a strip of scotch tape to the top, before grabbing his suitcase and the note and darting through the house and out the front door.

The truck had pulled into his gravel driveway, and sitting on the hood, grinning like the maniac they were, was a face that Janus, by his own design, had not seen for over three weeks, something that he decided then and there he did not want to happen again.

"Get back in dumbass, the neighbors are going to see you," was Janus’s greeting to them.

Janus had a lot of secrets, and Remus was one of his best-kept ones - not that it would matter much after this, he supposed, but it was about the principle of the thing.

He'd met Remus Duke when they were fourteen, back when Janus called himself a she and Remus called themself a he. Janus sometimes liked to amuse himself by wondering whether his parents would have approved of Remus and he, back when the two of them thought they were straight and cis. The answer was, of course, no. Remus had always been too loud, too crude, too disturbing to be anyone his parents could care for, even if his Dad hadn't had that most annoying of fatherly traits, which was a possessive protectiveness of his baby girl from other men and boys, who were always perceived threats. Janus wondered, sometimes, if it was that sure knowledge of parental disapproval that he was skirting around that he drew him in at first, more so than Remus themself. 

That changed soon enough, in any case.

"Aw, c'mon, is that any way to treat your favorite nuisance?"

Janus stuck his note on the front screen door as Remus hopped off the hood, then went back over, grabbed Remus by the back of their neck and yanked them down into a searing kiss. As they separated, Remus had that soft, stunned, punch-drunk look that they got sometimes when they looked at Janus that never failed to make his heart do a stupid little flutter.

Janus grinned savagely up at Remus. "C'mon." He hoisted his suitcase up, and Remus helped him put it in the truck bed, where a large bag and a green suitcase were already tucked in and secured. Remus opened Janus’s door for him, because they were a dork, and Janus slid along the peeling vinyl of the single bench seat as Remus got in so that he could be pressed up against their side.

Remus kissed Janus again. "Let's get the fuck out of here babe."

Janus had plans. Big plans. He and Remus had been planning this entire thing for over a year, and he couldn’t wait. "Let's."

* * *

Around half-past one, Billie Lou Wiley made her way into the beauty shop as dignified and cool as a lady who wanted nothing more than to burst through the doors like the hounds were at her heels could.

“Hello Billie Lou,” Edith called from where she was putting Mercy’s hair in rollers. “Thought you came in not two days ago. What you in for?”

“Hello Edith,” Billie Lou said. “Well, I’ll tell you, after what I just saw this morning, I absolutely _had_ to come over right away.” 

This got all of the ladies attention. Billie Lou was notorious around the town for knowing everything about everyone, and if she had a new piece of news that couldn’t wait for the quilting bee that night, that meant it was _big_.

“You want some water or lemonade?” Edith asked. 

“Lemonade would be mighty fine, thank you.” Billie Lou sat down on the waiting sofa, arranging her skirt. When Patty Jean handed her a glass of pink lemonade, she took a nice long sip, relishing the strained quiet of her audience, waiting for her to speak.

“Well,” she started, swirling the ice in her glass. “Y’all know the Graves’ daughter, right?”

“Little Gail?” Mercy asked.

“Not Gail, the older one.”

“Oh, Mary! What happened to her?” Patty Jean asked.

“Not what happened to her,” Billie Lou said, hiding her delight as politely as she could. “What she did.”

The commotion of raised voices that instantly rose up was exactly the response she had been looking for.

“Mary! Why I never. She’s such a sweetheart, always so polite, what on Earth did she do?” Ruth asked.

“I’ll tell you.” Billie Lou took another long sip of lemonade. “Well, I’m at home, cleaning, when I hear a truck start coming down the road. Now I know that there ain’t usually trucks on our road at that time of day, so I go look out the window. Imagine my surprise when I see an old pickup that I ain’t never seen before pull into the Graves’ driveway. A boy - maybe twenty or so, around that age - comes out and sits on the hood, like he’s waiting. But he don’t wait for long before Mary comes out, and you’ll never guess what she’s holding.”

“A shovel?”

“Her Daddy’s shotgun?”

“No. Her little red _suitcase_.”

The commotion of raised voices was even louder this time, and Billie Lou reveled in it.

“No!” 

“She did not!”

“Oh she did!” Billie Lou cut back in. “She comes walking out and he lays one right on her, right in the driveway, then throws her suitcase into the bed, and they get right in the cab, neat as you please, and drive off.”

“Where d’you suppose they went?” Ruth asked.

“Probably eloped,” Mercy said knowingly. “That’s why she didn’t tell no one.”

“Vegas, I bet,” Adeline pitched in. “I hear you don’t have to wait at all over there, just show up and get the certificate. Don’t cost much neither.”

“Oh, poor girl, if he’s got her convinced that that’s a good idea,” Fannie sighed.

“He must be some smooth-talking snake if he’s got Mary wrapped around him that tight,” Edith sniffed. “Such a smart girl, always had her feet on the ground.”

“Shame that your Macon preached about the prodigal son last Sunday,” Mercy said, nudging Ruth. “Would’ve been perfect for this coming one.”

The Reverend’s wife shook her head. “I’m glad that he told that story last Sunday,” she said. “Perhaps it will have stuck with Mary, and she’ll keep it in her heart and let the Lord guide her back home.” Ruth turned to Billie Lou and raised a prim eyebrow. “I don’t suppose you’ve told Ida Mae about this yet, or did you come right over here first?”

Billie Lou knew that Ruth didn’t approve of her gossipy tendencies, but as long as Ruth sat right in front of her and listened as rapturously as everyone else, Billie Lou didn’t think she had any high ground to speak on. “Of course I did,” Billie Lou sniffed. “She was over at Millie Ann’s, I gave them a call first before I went anywhere, I wanted Ida Mae to know. She said she was going back to her house.”

Ida Mae had, in fact, arrived back at her house by then. She’d called Luther home, and they were currently standing in the kitchen, trying to come to terms with what had happened. Ida Mae was holding the note, that was, by now, rather crumpled around the edges. She read and reread it, trying to find something else, anything else, that might have explained why their little girl had run off.

“I just don’t get it,” Luther was saying. “Eighteen years under this roof, and she just leaves, just like that?”

“I suppose she’s old enough,” Ida Mae said, the platitude sounding so insincere even to her that Luther didn’t bother responding to it.

“Ran off with some boy too,” he continued. “Who even is this kid?”

“She never mentioned any boy,” Ida Mae replied softly.

“Damn fool,” Luther growled. “When I get my hands on that punk -”

“I just hope that Mary isn’t doing anything she’ll regret,” Ida Mae sighed.

Several hours away, in a truck held together by duct tape and hope, the one window that worked rolled down since there was no AC, pouring over an atlas and arguing with Remus about which ramp to take, regret was the furthest thing from Janus’s mind.


End file.
